Food or edible material: processes – compositions – and products – Products per se – or processes of preparing or treating... – Fat or oil is basic ingredient other than butter in emulsion...
Reexamination Certificate
2000-11-09
2001-11-06
Paden, Carolyn (Department: 1761)
Food or edible material: processes, compositions, and products
Products per se, or processes of preparing or treating...
Fat or oil is basic ingredient other than butter in emulsion...
C426S555000, C426S549000, C426S560000, C426S638000, C426S640000, C426S650000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06312751
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Edible fat based, flavoured fat systems suitable for use in baked goods and snacks are known from U.S. Pat. No. 5,431,945 or U.S. Pat. No. 4,356,643 or U.S. Pat. No. 5,447,735. From these documents butter based flakes are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. '945. These flakes are free of sugar and contain a lot of predried butter fat and high contents of dried milk solids. Particulars of the fats that can be applied are not given, all that is said about the nature of the fats, that can be applied is that they are related to butter fat. According to U.S. Pat. No. '643 cheese based flakes can be obtained along lines that are very similar to the lines set out above for U.S. Pat. No. '945. These flakes contain high levels of dried cheese solids while the fats that can be applied are the same or very similar to the fats according to above U.S. Pat. No. '945. According to U.S. Pat. No. '735 cinnamon based flakes can be obtained that contain large amounts of granulated sugar while the fat is again a butter fat or a fat closely related to butter fat.
GB 2 176 143 discloses fat flakes or fat granules, wherein the fat applied is selected from margarine, butter or lard (p.1,1.13-14). These flakes are used for cooking purposes and not as an ingredient for the preparation of bakery products, wherein the flakes must give a good flavour boost and must provide the bakery products with a good snap. As margarine and butter are fat emulsions containing about 20 wt % of water the use thereof in flakes that contain sugars is very limited because the sugars will be dissolved in the water phase of the fat emulsion and cannot contribute to the flavour boost nor to the snap of the products. Moreover the use of butter also has the drawbacks set out above. Lard is a fat that is relatively soft and thus has a low hardness therefore the use thereof in flakes will lead to unacceptable products
U.S. Pat. No. 5,690,985 discloses liquid edible emulsion spreads wherein the fat phase contains high levels of liquid oils. Therefore these fats will be too soft for our purposes. In order to provide some structuring capacities to the fats 2 to 10 wt % of trans fat is added to the compositions. Thus this document is completely silent about fat flakes as we aim for whereas the fats that are disclosed are indicated for use in spreads only , which is a use that is completely different from our intended use.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,045,588 concerns with the use of fats with at least 40% polyunsaturated fatty acids in fats for margarines. Nothing is disclosed about the use of these fats in fat flakes for bakery applications that are supposed to provide a flavour boost and a snap. Moreover the fats according to this document have relatively high trans contents that we prefer to avoid.
We found that flakes with the composition as given above did not have a proper hardness leading to products when applied in baked bakery products with insufficient texture and oral mouthfeel, in particular to products that lacked snap and flavour boost, due to the poor flavour release of these flakes. Therefore we performed a study to find out whether we could find novel products wherein these insufficiencies were improved. Further we tried to find compositions that were easier to process than the known compositions.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
This study resulted in our invention and this invention thus concerns in the first instance the finding of fats that meet a specific hardness criterium which enabled us to overcome the problems of the prior art. In particular we found novel edible fat based, flavoured fat systems suitable for use in baked goods and snacks comprising:
i) 0 to 2 wt % of moisture;
ii) 25 to 90 wt % of a bakery compatible fat having a Stevens hardness at 25° C. after storage at 25° C. for 4 hrs (=C25) of more than 65 g, preferably more then 70 g and having<5 wt % of polyunsaturated fatty acids with at least 3 double bonds or conjugated linoleic acid;
iii) 0 to 15 wt % of a flavouring system
iv) 0 to 40 wt % of sugar
v) 0 to 60 wt %, preferably 5 to 40 wt % of a filler material other than sugar
vi) 0 to 50 wt %, preferably 0.5 to 45 wt % and most preferably 5 to 40 wt % of a health component, wherein the total of components iii) to vi) is more than 8 wt %, preferably 8 to 75 wt % and which edible fat based system has a particle size between 0.05 mm and 2.5 cm.
DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS
The Stevens hardness is measured using the following method:
1. take a sample of 100 g fat and melt it in beaker at 50° C.
2. place the beaker in a water bath at 15° C. and stir continuously until too thick
3. place beaker in water bath at 35° C. and stir until 30 just pourable
4. pour fat in a petri dish and cool at 15° C. for 30 minutes
5. place petri dish at 25° C. and measure Stevens hardness, using a Stevens. LFRA Texture Analyser (Mechtric/Stevens) provided with a load cell of 0-1000 g and a needle ASTM D-5, after 4 hours.
6. use a needle speed of 0.5 mm/sec and a distance of 4 mm.
It was unexpected that fats that have relatively low N25 values gave such good results because it should have been expected that these fats would result in low hardness values and thus in insufficient textural properties.
Flavouring systems that can be applied in our novel flakes can be selected from the group consisting of the natural flavour components from fruit, like oranges, strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, goose berries, redberries, blackberries, apples, pears, peaches, apricots, cherries, from nuts, like walnuts, hazelnuts, macadamia's, groundnuts, from herbs or spices like cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, cloves, allspice, from maple sugar or dehydrated maple syrup, from garlic or onions, from butter or cheese, from savory flavours such as savory culinary aids, from synthetic flavour components imitating above natural flavours, and from mixtures thereof.
These flavouring systems can now be applied in any form, including forms that are excluded by U.S. Pat. No. '735, wherein the flavour must be a particulated solid. The flavours that can be applied now can be used in a form selected from the group consisting of: finely devided solid flavours; finely divided solid or liquid flavours on a solid carrier, liquid flavours and microcapsules containing a solid, or liquid, or gaseous flavour.
The fats that lead to the beneficial results indicated above are different from or dissimilar to butter fat and can be selected from the group consisting of: natural or hardened glycerides based on C12+ fatty acids such as cocoa butter, soybean oil, cotton seed oil, groundnut oil, rapeseed oil, sunflower oil, corn oil, palm oil, shea oil, illipe fat, palm kernel oil, coconut oil or fractions or blends thereof and preferably having a content of less than 5 wt % trans acids. However only those fats that meet the hardness criterium mentioned above will give the desired benefits.
The filler is used to structure the flakes while not attributing to much to its caloric content. Suitable filler materials are dried particulated ingredients preferably selected from the group consisting of flour, skim milk powder, butter milk powder, starches, polysaccharides other than sugar, gums, whey powder, cellulose and hydrocolloids.
Nowadays consumers are more and more interested in products that are healthy and in particular in foods that contain health components. However this has as a consequence that also the fats applied in these foods must be healthy and this thus means that in particular partially hardened fats i.e fats with a relatively high trans fatty acid content, which are known to give structuring to food products but that are considered as unhealthy fats, can not be applied in these foods. Therefore it was highly unexpected that such health foods could be obtained without the need to use such partially hardened fats.
Because of the fats that we apply in our novel flakes it is possible now to make healthy food products that contain a healthy fat component and simultaneously incorporate a health component i
Cain Frederick William
Herzing Tony
McNeill Gerald Patrick
Schmidl Bettina
Paden Carolyn
Pillsbury & Winthrop LLP
Unilever Patent Holdings
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